J. Gerard Stranch IV

The Farm Twenty Minutes Out

Gerard Stranch’s class-action and mass-tort practice grew from a three-generation Tennessee plaintiffs’ tradition and now spans opioid, automotive, privacy, pharmaceutical, securities, and product-liability litigation.

Stranch still lives on the farm outside Nashville where he was raised. The law was part of the family landscape as well. His grandfather, Cecil Branstetter, founded the predecessor firm in 1952 and represented labor unions and consumers. His father, Jim Stranch III, developed the firm’s class-action practice. His mother, Jane Branstetter Stranch, practiced in employee-benefit litigation before becoming a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Stranch graduated from Emory University in 2000 and Vanderbilt University Law School in 2003. He later returned to Vanderbilt as an adjunct professor of civil-litigation practice and today is the founding and managing member of Stranch, Jennings & Garvey.

Baby Doe of Sullivan County

The individual plaintiff in the Sullivan County opioid litigation was an infant identified as Baby Doe, born drug-dependent with neonatal abstinence syndrome. The case was the first opioid suit in the country to name a child with neonatal abstinence syndrome as a plaintiff.

Stranch served as lead trial counsel for one individual plaintiff, nine Tennessee counties, and eighteen cities and towns in litigation under Tennessee’s Drug Dealer Liability Act. The action addressed alleged participation in the illegal opioid market and local-government costs involving emergency response, treatment, law enforcement, social services, and public budgets.

The Act defines liability through knowing participation in an illegal drug market. Its market-liability framework addresses a supply chain in which the path of a particular dose may be difficult to trace, making evidence about participation in the alleged market central to the plaintiffs’ theory.

In April 2021, Chancellor E. G. Moody found repeated discovery noncompliance, false statements, and nearly 400,000 documents produced after discovery had closed. He entered default judgment on liability against the remaining Endo companies. As the parties prepared for a damages trial, Endo agreed to pay $35 million to resolve all twenty-eight plaintiffs’ claims. The direct lump-sum agreement was reached in July 2021, before certain Endo affiliates entered bankruptcy the following year.

Under the agreement, the participating counties and municipalities controlled their shares and faced no restrictions on how the money could be used. That local allocation preserved a direct connection between the recovery and the needs each government identified in its own community.

The Sullivan Baby Doe trial team was named Tennessee Trial Lawyer of the Year for 2022. Stranch also served as counsel to the proposed negotiation class in the national prescription-opioid multidistrict litigation in Cleveland.

Volkswagen Clean Diesel

Federal regulators alleged that software in approximately 590,000 model-year 2009 through 2016 vehicles could recognize an emissions test and alter operation of the emissions-control system, while the vehicles emitted pollutants differently in ordinary driving. Judge Charles R. Breyer appointed Stranch to the twenty-two-member plaintiffs’ steering committee in January 2016. The 2.0-liter consumer program was valued at approximately $10.033 billion and offered eligible owners and lessees buybacks, no-cost lease terminations, approved emissions modifications, and additional compensation. Separate settlements addressed 3.0-liter vehicles and Bosch.

Those choices translated the common software evidence into owner-specific relief: an owner could return a vehicle through a buyback, a lessee could terminate without cost, and an owner who wished to keep the vehicle could select an approved emissions modification if one existed. The claims process had to align those choices with vehicle models, engine sizes, regulator-approved modifications, and settlement administration.

Privacy and Data-Incident Settlements

Stranch served as a co-lead for the 2023 MGM Resorts data-incident leadership team. In June 2025, the Nevada federal court granted final approval to a combined $45 million settlement fund for claims arising from the 2019 and 2023 incidents and recognized Stranch as class counsel. Claimants could seek up to $15,000 for documented losses, and the agreement provided one year of financial-account monitoring in addition to cash benefits, identity-theft protection, and insurance. Approved cash payments were sent in December 2025.

In the CorrectCare medical-data litigation, the Eastern District of Kentucky appointed Benjamin Johns, Gary Klinger, Stranch, and Lynn Toops as interim co-lead class counsel. The court granted final approval in September 2024 to a $6.49 million non-reversionary fund providing reimbursement of documented losses up to $10,000, alternative cash relief, and an additional state-law benefit for California claimants. Nearly 100,000 claims were submitted from a class of 572,453 affected people. The agreement preserved a route for people who learned of the settlement after the ordinary deadline and reserved at least half of the fund for alternative cash relief and California payments so documented-loss claims could not exhaust it.

Notice required a separate design for a class that included people in custody. The administrator located physical addresses for 391,449 class members, including some at correctional facilities, and supplemented direct mail with a website, toll-free line, targeted online notices, press outreach, and communication aimed at families and others likely to relay the information.

Private-Equity, Pharmaceutical, and Securities Recoveries

Stranch served on the plaintiffs’ executive committee in Dahl v. Bain Capital Partners and helped coordinate discovery, expert development, and summary-judgment litigation. The work examined buyers, target companies, bid communications, consortium arrangements, and the holdings of affected shareholder classes. Seven completed settlements returned $590.5 million to shareholders.

He coordinated the Tennessee litigation arising from the New England Compounding Center outbreak. The proceedings brought together personal-injury claims, bankruptcy, insurers, clinics, product distribution, and public-health evidence and produced more than $225 million in settlements and claims procedures for affected patients and families.

That coordination preserved claimant-specific medical and causation evidence while connecting each Tennessee claim to the common production and distribution record developed in the national proceeding.

Stranch was also appointed co-lead counsel in the Alpha Corporation securities litigation, which produced a $161 million recovery. His role included pleadings, discovery, expert development, dispositive motions, negotiation, notice, allocation, and final approval.

Teaching and Firm Leadership

Stranch graduated from Emory University and Vanderbilt University Law School. He teaches civil-litigation practice as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt and is the founding and managing member of Stranch, Jennings & Garvey.

His practice includes class actions, complex litigation, mass torts, privacy and cybersecurity, bank fees, labor and employee-benefit matters, wage-and-hour disputes, product liability, trucking cases, and public-entity opioid litigation. He also served as counsel to the proposed negotiation class in the national prescription-opioid multidistrict litigation.

He is also a founding member of the Cambridge Forum on Plaintiff’s Mass Tort Litigation.